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Monday, January 18, 2016

The meaning of Western experts' anti-Saudi campaign

Saudi security forces

The
House of Saud’s sectarian venom spreads across Middle East. “The ruling
family, having incited Sunni-Shia conflict, will not be able to control it.”
The ideological campaign to demonize Saudi Arabia by highlighting elements of
its behavior that could also be easily and legitimately noted in Iran’s case
continues. And of course, all of this is happening by accident. Yeah. One
fine morning, a bunch of pundits, academics and government officials from all over
the world just decided that it’s time to speak ill of the would-be dead, if
they had their way. And no, human rights and concerns for regional
stability are not the issue here, because, had these being the issue, the same
people would have been condemning Iran as vehemently as they do Saudi. As I
repeatedly noted earlier, and will continue to remind, it’s all about a
misguided vision for the future of the region that is completely divorced from
its actual realities, but looks some neat on paper.

But that’s not all. Powerful
lobbies, supported one way or another by Iran, seem to be involved. The
following is a case in point as to how: Podemos:
Spain's anti-corruption party ‘received illicit funding from Iran.’ “The El Confidencial
news website claims the party received more than €5m through a Spanish TV
station operated by an Iranian businessman and financed by the government in
Tehran.”

To summarize: the hypocrisy
involved in attacking Saudi Arabia but not Iran, for similar behavior, is an
indication of the presence of an agenda. For both powers are guilty of
practicing and encouraging sectarian tendencies, both powers are known major human
rights abusers, both powers support global terrorism, both powers employs PR firms
and lobbyists to work on their behalf in the West (albeit Iran has developed
more of an edge in this regard over the last two decades due to its success in
cultivating sympathetic members of the its large expat community), both powers foster
blatantly racist impressions of the other, and of others in general (those who
confuse hospitality and kindness to strangers for which both Persians and
Arabs, among other peoples of the East, are known, for some latent embrace of
human equality at some inner level are morons), so, how can either of these
powers pave the way for regional stability without a major change in outlook
and governing ethos in both countries, and without the kind of American
leadership that focuses on changing the troubling behavior exhibited by both.
And yet, realists are not opting for evenhandedness here. No. Rather, they
advocate closer relations with one side (Iran) at expense of the other,
irrespective of the price others in the region (Syrian, Iraqis, Lebanese,
Yemenis, etc.) have to pay for this change in polarization. They celebrate the
one and demonize the other while predicting, and encouraging, in fact, its
destruction, knowing fully well that a Saudi implosion will have dangerous
repercussions all over the region.

Personally, I don't want to see
more states fail, and I definitely don’t want to see a country as pivotal as
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Egypt collapse. Rather than accept the
inevitability of any of this, I prefer that we try to prevent it. But this goal
cannot be achieved by rewarding the very rogue behavior that brought us to this
point. You cannot reward the very attitude you want to see change. But this is
exactly what the realists have done and are still doing. They think that what
they have just achieved is a diplomatic triumph not a disastrous
capitulation. But, contrary to what they hope and claim, the policies advanced
by realists are not compensating for the blunders of turn-of-the-century neocons;
rather, they are amplifying and adding to them, as witnessed by the fact that
we have far more violence and chaos in the region today than there was eight
years ago. But such an objective criterion for measuring progress is not what the
“realists” use to assess their accomplishment. Rather, they think that their
vindication will come tomorrow. For now, millions in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere
will have to endure the misery and havoc of their triumphant diplomacy.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World